Publications by authors named "Markus S"

Dynein-1 is a microtubule motor responsible for the transport of cytoplasmic cargoes. Activation of motility requires it first overcome an autoinhibited state prior to its assembly with dynactin and a cargo adaptor. Studies suggest that Lis1 may relieve dynein's autoinhibited state.

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Objective: The establishment of clinical registries is essential for the comprehensive evaluation of surgical outcomes. In 2006, the Schulthess Shoulder Arthroplasty Registry (SAR) was launched to systematically assess safety, implant longevity, functional outcomes, pain levels, quality of life, and patient satisfaction in individuals undergoing shoulder arthroplasty. This paper aims to outline the registry data and demonstrate how it is leveraged to improve clinical outcomes.

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Microtubule-targeting agents (MTAs) have been successfully translated from basic research into clinical therapies and have been widely used as first- and second-line chemotherapy drugs for various cancers. However, current MTAs exhibit positive responses only in subsets of patients and are often accompanied by side effects due to their impact on normal cells. This underscores an urgent need to develop novel therapeutic strategies that enhance MTA efficacy while minimizing toxicity to normal tissues.

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  • Microtubule motor cytoplasmic dynein requires a specific complex assembly involving dynein, dynactin, and adapter proteins for effective transport within cells.
  • Initial assumptions about the interaction between dynein and dynactin have been challenged by new cryo-EM structures that did not confirm earlier findings, suggesting a more complex relationship.
  • The study identifies the N-terminus of the dynein intermediate chain as a crucial site for binding both dynactin and Ndel1, indicating the importance of a sequential process in dynein activation that involves multiple proteins like LIS1.
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  • Intracellular Zn2+ levels rise due to neuronal depolarization, but its immediate effects on neuron function are not well understood.
  • Elevated Zn2+ concentrations decrease the movement of lysosomes and mitochondria in primary rat hippocampal neurons and HeLa cells by inhibiting motor proteins without affecting their binding to microtubules.
  • Zn2+ binds directly to microtubules and promotes the detachment of specific proteins (like tau and DCX) from them, indicating that Zn2+ plays a crucial role in regulating axonal transport and related microtubule processes.
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  • LIS1 is a crucial regulator of the motor protein dynein, impacting its functionality and location within cells by influencing its binding to microtubules.
  • Mutant dynein variants were created to analyze how binding to LIS1 is affected by whether dynein is attached to microtubules or not, showing that specific configurations of dynein lead to different affinities for LIS1.
  • Structural studies using cryo-EM demonstrated that binding to microtubules causes changes in dynein's shape, which play a key role in how LIS1 activates dynein's motor function.
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During mitosis, kinetochore-microtubule attachments are monitored by a molecular surveillance system known as the spindle assembly checkpoint. The prevailing model posits that dynein evicts checkpoint proteins (e.g.

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  • Cytoplasmic dynein is a key motor protein that facilitates the retrograde transport of materials within cells, needing to form a specific complex (DDA) for effective movement.
  • The interaction between dynein and its binding partner dynactin is essential but was unclear in previous studies; recent findings show that the N-terminus of the dynein intermediate chain interacts with both dynactin and regulatory proteins like Nde1/Ndel1.
  • The research uncovers that LIS1, a crucial assembly factor, must be transferred from Ndel1 to dynein in separate steps, highlighting new regulatory mechanisms in activating dynein for cellular transport.
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  • Cytoplasmic dynein-1 is a motor protein that moves along microtubules, facilitating the transport of various cargoes in different cells, but its study has challenges due to its complex roles and regulatory factors.
  • Budding yeast serves as an effective model for studying dynein due to its simplified function of positioning the mitotic spindle, allowing for clearer analysis of dynein's activity.
  • The paper outlines detailed protocols for using fluorescence microscopy and computational methods to quantitatively measure dynein activity in live yeast cells, offering a valuable resource for researchers interested in this area.
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Unlabelled: For critically ill adults, oxygen saturation is continuously monitored using pulse oximetry (Spo) as a surrogate for arterial oxygen saturation (Sao). Skin pigmentation may affect accuracy of Spo by introducing error from statistical bias, variance, or both. We evaluated relationships between race, Spo, Sao, and hypoxemia (Sao < 88%) or hyperoxemia (Pao > 150 mm Hg) among adults receiving mechanical ventilation in a medical ICU.

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Early detection of sheep pregnancy and the prediction of how many lambs a pregnant ewe delivers affects sheep farmers in a number of ways, most notably with regard to feed management, lambing rate, and sheep/lamb health. The standard practice for direct detection of sheep pregnancy and litter size (PLS) is ultrasonography. However, this approach has a number of limitations.

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  • Dynein motors help move the mitotic spindle to the division plane during cell division, with assistance from a microtubule-associated protein (MAP) called She1 in budding yeast.
  • She1 plays a crucial role in keeping the spindle near the bud neck, ensuring proper segregation of chromosomes into mother and daughter cells during anaphase.
  • The study shows that She1 regulates dynein activity by binding to specific dynein conformations and astral microtubules in the mother cell, thus controlling spindle movement toward the daughter cell.
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Background: To investigate the long-term outcomes of femoropopliteal bypass surgery in patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) and TransAtlantic Inter-Society Consensus II (TASC II), type D (TASC D) femoropopliteal disease.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed for all consecutive patients undergoing above-knee (AK) femoropopliteal bypass surgery at an academic vascular centre between January 2007 and March 2019. Patients with claudication (IC) and patients with CLTI were included.

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Background: Despite increasing trends of nonfatal opioid overdoses in emergency departments (EDs), population-based studies comparing prescription opioid dosing patterns before and after nonfatal opioid overdoses are limited.

Objectives: To evaluate characteristics of prescribing behaviors before and after nonfatal overdoses, with a focus on opioid dosage.

Methods: Included were 5,395 adult residents of Tennessee discharged from hospital EDs after a first nonfatal opioid overdose (2016-2017).

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Background: Pancreatic carcinoma carries a devastating prognosis and is the 4th leading cause for cancer related death in the US and most European countries. Apart from imaging and CA 19-9, pancreatic carcinoma is still lacking reliable markers to assess tumor dynamics and to monitor treatment response over time. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of cell free tumor-DNA (cft-DNA), respectively KRAS mutation in peripheral blood, detection as a prognostic and predictive value for chemotherapy monitoring.

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Mutations in the genes that encode α- and β-tubulin underlie many neurological diseases, most notably malformations in cortical development. In addition to revealing the molecular basis for disease etiology, studying such mutations can provide insight into microtubule function and the role of the large family of microtubule effectors. In this study, we use budding yeast to model one such mutation-Gly436Arg in α-tubulin, which is causative of malformations in cortical development-in order to understand how it impacts microtubule function in a simple eukaryotic system.

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  • - The study assesses the effectiveness of genome sequencing (GS) for diagnosing congenital limb malformations in patients who previously received no molecular diagnosis after standard testing.
  • - Researchers analyzed 69 cases and found likely pathogenic variants in 12 of them, including one new gene related to ectrodactyly and two complex structural variants.
  • - The findings suggest that GS can uncover a wide range of genomic variants linked to limb malformations, which are often missed by traditional diagnostic methods, though no noncoding variants were identified.
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  • FOLFIRINOX is more effective than gemcitabine for treating pancreatic cancer, but it comes with higher toxicity levels and the need for biomarkers to predict patient responses.
  • Certain microRNAs, specifically miR-21-5p, miR-10b-5p, and miR-34a-5p, are linked to resistance against gemcitabine, but their expression levels do not significantly impact outcomes for FOLFIRINOX treatment.
  • A study involving 29 patients shows that the combination of chemotherapy in FOLFIRINOX can potentially counteract some negative prognostic factors associated with advanced pancreatic cancer.
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Mutton and lamb sales continue to grow globally at a rate of 5% per year. However, sheep farming struggles with low profit margins due to high feed costs and modest carcass yields. Selecting those sheep expected to convert feed efficiently and have high carcass merit, as early as possible in their life cycle, could significantly improve the profitability of sheep farming.

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Lissencephaly ('smooth brain') is a severe brain disease associated with numerous symptoms, including cognitive impairment, and shortened lifespan. The main causative gene of this disease - lissencephaly-1 (LIS1) - has been a focus of intense scrutiny since its first identification almost 30 years ago. LIS1 is a critical regulator of the microtubule motor cytoplasmic dynein, which transports numerous cargoes throughout the cell, and is a key effector of nuclear and neuronal transport during brain development.

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Dynein is a microtubule motor that transports many different cargos in various cell types and contexts. How dynein is regulated to perform these activities with spatial and temporal precision remains unclear. Human dynein is regulated by autoinhibition, whereby intermolecular contacts limit motor activity.

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The synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) coated with hydrophilic poly-sodium-acrylate (PSA) ligands was studied to assess PSA-MNP complexes as draw solution (DS) solutes in forward osmosis (FO). For MNP-based DS, the surface modification and the size of the MNPs are two crucial factors to achieve a high osmolality. Superparamagnetic nanoparticles (NP) with functional groups attached may represent the ideal DS where chemical modifications of the NPs can be used in optimizing the DS osmolality and the magnetic properties allows for efficient recovery (DS re-concentration) using an external magnetic field.

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Cytoplasmic dynein plays critical roles within the developing and mature nervous systems, including effecting nuclear migration, and retrograde transport of various cargos. Unsurprisingly, mutations in dynein are causative of various developmental neuropathies and motor neuron diseases. These 'dyneinopathies' define a broad spectrum of diseases with no known correlation between mutation identity and disease state.

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The spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) prevents erroneous chromosome segregation by delaying mitotic progression when chromosomes are incorrectly attached to the mitotic spindle. This delay is mediated by mitotic checkpoint complexes (MCCs), which assemble at unattached kinetochores and repress the activity of the anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C). The cellular localizations of MCCs are likely critical for proper SAC function, yet remain poorly defined.

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